


The Metamorphosis

by kell_be_belle



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Angst, Ficlet, Gen, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Thinks He Is a Monster, Kaer Morhen, Physical Changes, Pre-Canon, Self-Esteem Issues, Teen Angst, Young Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, young eskel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:49:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27764770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kell_be_belle/pseuds/kell_be_belle
Summary: Following his second trial, Geralt notices something strange happening to his hair that leaves him feeling unsettled. As a new reality sets in, Geralt finds himself grasping to keep hold of the person he was, but fighting against the change is like swimming upstream. The young witcher must let go of the dream of the life he could have had and learn to live with realiy of the one he has now.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 51





	The Metamorphosis

Eskel is the first to notice the change. They are in the bath house, scrubbing themselves of the sweat and grime collected from that afternoon’s training session, when he traces a circle around the crown of Geralt’s head. Geralt looks up at his brother with an arched brow, clusters of soap bubbles bursting weakly on his temples. They smell faintly of pine. 

“Your hair,” Eskel comments vaguely. It has begun to grow shaggy; curling boyishly around his ears. Geralt couldn’t remember the last time it had been cut. Sometime before his second trial, he supposed, which meant a few months at most. Between his recovery and subsequent reintroduction into training, there hasn’t been much opportunity. Not that Geralt was complaining. Haircuts were often handled by Vesemir and the witcher’s prowess with a sword in no way extended to that of its far more domestic cousin. He left most boys looking like hastily shorn sheep. 

“Look,” Eskel asserts, pointing to one of the mirrors by the stack of washing basins. Geralt douses himself to remove the last of the soap and pads across the room. The soles of his bare feet make a wet slap against the stone. He swipes an open palm against the mirror, exposing a strip of the glass beneath the steam to bear his reflection. Nearly two summers have passed since Geralt survived the Trial of the Grasses and still the preternatural gleam of his eyes in the haze makes something squirm inside him. 

Focusing on the task at hand, Geralt tilts his head this way and that in attempts to discern what Eskel had seen. All appears normal. As normal as things could for a burgeoning witcher. Geralt’s hair is a deep copper, like the rust on a blade left by the battlefield. A coin forgotten in a pocket. Memories of his mother are scarce, but he can distinctly recall the color of her hair. Red, not unlike his own, but a much more violent shade. When she walked, it had shimmered behind her like a trail of fire. The mythical firebird given human form. 

Geralt tips his head forward, pushing his gaze so far up it makes his eyes ache in their sockets, but at last he sees it. There, sprouting from the crown of his head like a star burst, is a patch of grey. No, not grey. Silver? He tilts his head further forward, pushes his gaze so much that he can see the ascending curve of his own lashes.

No, not silver. 

White. Ashen and blanched as the bark on a birch tree. Fallen snow. Milk in the pail. 

With a hand braced against the slick glass of the mirror, Geralt turns to Eskel in search of resolution. Between the effects of the trials and the more general physical changes of a boy of fourteen, Geralt had grown somewhat accustomed to his ever altering appearance. His cheeks had lost much of their youthful fullness along with their color. His nose had been broken enough times to knot with a permanent crookedness. His muscles had begun to swell under the stretch of his skin; a combination of the relentless training and the transition into maturity. Geralt was no longer the child he had once been. That child had been abandoned on the roadside. Literally and figuratively left to the wolves. He understood that much of him had changed and that much still would, but there had to be some limit. A line drawn in the sand that warned to step no further.

Eskel looked at Geralt helplessly, his mouth a hard line across the expanse of his jaw. Of course he had no explanation. He and Geralt were the same, afterall. Unwanted children left with no option other than to persevere. Sailors thrown overboard and beaten mercilessly by the waves. Eskel carefully rearranges his features and comes to join Geralt beside the mirror, pressing a comforting hand between his shoulder blades. “Perhaps talk to Vesemir?” he offers hopefully, though the quaver in his voice is still detectable. He is afraid and doing his best not to show it. The prospect of speaking with Vesemir soothes him marginally, but dread still slithers like a serpent in Geralt’s belly. 

Eskel takes Geralt by the wrist and leads him to one of the pools, promising there is nothing an extended soak in the warm, sulfuric waters couldn’t help. Geralt severely doubts that, but Eskel has always been the more optimistic of them. He hopes- perhaps even prays, but to which gods, he does not know- that, that optimism won’t be misplaced. 

***

Vesemir had had no explanation for the change in Geralt’s hair. He consulted with the Council of Masters who in turn consulted with the mages who also had no explanation. No other witcher had undergone the secondary trials and lived to be observed. A side effect, they theorized. Geralt was observed meticulously in the following weeks and when nothing else concerning emerged, they went back to overlooking him. They moved onto some other novelty, other design, other torture. 

Geralt’s hair is now shoulder length. A curtain he has taken to hiding behind. The white has grown out to cover the majority of his scalp and upon a quick glance, it looks as though he’s wearing some sort of cap. He has thought about cutting it, but every time he thinks of Vesemir’s scissors razing through the rust colored ends he feels his throat tighten. For the time being, he can still pretend that things are as they have always been. The color that flashes at the corner of his eye is still familiar. 

There is, however, a problem with pretending. 

Geralt cannot stand to look at himself in the mirror. Cannot stand the reminder of reality. He goes to great lengths to avoid facing his own reflection in polished blades and sets of armor; puddles after the rain and the empty plate at the end of meals. The bath house has become his only place of reprieve. The steam on the glass keeps his reflection obscured. Here, he is only the impression of a person. A ghost. Just another of the hundreds of spectres that haunt the halls of Kaer Morhen. 

While he can avoid his own reflection, Geralt cannot escape the scrutiny of his peers. The other boys whisper about him as he sits perched upon a stool, scraping the blood and dirt from under his fingernails. They whisper about him constantly. On the training grounds, in the dormitories and dining hall. It is an incessant humming like cicadas in the lush summer trees. They must know he can hear them; the trials have heightened their hearing, afterall. Perhaps that is why they do it. Perhaps they want him to hear just so they can watch the way he curls in upon himself; watch the shuttering of his yellow eyes. Fresh blood mixes with the dried on Geralt’s fingertips where an old wound is reopened by his fierce and careless scrubbing. 

Geralt feels numb to it. 

Eskel pads up beside him, jovial as ever. He slaps Geralt heartily between the shoulder blades, tawdrily commending him for his performance on the Killer. Geralt smiles sheepishly, gives his brother an affectionate shove. Their love is warm and rough. A caress from calloused palms. He knows that Eskel is distracting him, though he can’t say his praises aren’t entirely misplaced. Geralt has found himself faster these days; stronger and more reactive, too. He is rising through the ranks like smoke to the sky. He will be top of their class soon. Pride swells small and buoyant in Geralt’s chest like a tentative flower blossoming under the ministrations of the sun. 

A flower swiftly trodden under the careless traveler’s boot. 

“A freak, even for a witcher.” In the cavernous expanse of the bathhouse, the words of the other boys bounce off stone and mist. Omnipresent. “More monstrous than the rest of us.” Their yellow eyes gleam in the haze and he is surrounded by them. A pack of wolves on the hunt. Geralt is closing in on himself again, protecting his most tender parts. “Perhaps one day he himself will need to be slain.” 

Geralt hastily douses himself to clean off the worst of the grime. He cannot stand to stay in the bath house a moment longer; not with all the wolves waiting to devour him. He rushes back to the changing room; to the nook where he had stored away his tunic and trousers. His skin is still damp as he tugs on his clothes and the rough cotton drags against him like hungry fingers. It makes his stomach turn. 

“Wait, Geralt!” Eskel is there, a towel wrapped loosely around the circle of his hips. A sliver of the pine-smelling soap is still clutched in the cage of his fingers. “Ignore them! Their insults only mask their jealousy.” Eskel is probably right, but still Geralt burns with shame as if soaked in pitch and set alight. It consumes him like a forest fire. 

A dampened hand clamps down on his shoulder as Geralt moves to turn away, and in the maddening din of his thoughts, he lashes out. He whirls and shoves his brother away with uncontrolled force. The antithesis to the raw tenderness they had shared mere moments ago; that suddenly seems like a lifetime ago. It is brutal and savage. The desperate strike of an animal trapped. Eskel is sent crashing back against the line of alcoves; the air knocked from his lungs in a hissing rush.

Horror strikes cold and fierce in Geralt’s chest as he realizes what he has done and for a moment he is frozen. His hands clutch uselessly in the folds of his tunic. He wants to apologize, but the words gather thick in his throat like molasses. The shame reignites within him with the ferocity of a dying star and he is burning, burning, burning. It will incinerate him. Not even his bones will remain; only ashes from which nothing will be reborn. Geralt turns and rushes up the stairs from the bath house, his boots slipping on the damp stone and sending him to his hands and knees. He crawls from the depths like the pitiful creature he is and does not look back. 

*****

When his senses returned, Geralt regretted his actions towards Eskel. The guilt gnawed in his belly as deep and raw as hunger. He apologized in the best way someone like him could, which wasn’t much. It was nowhere near the apology that Eskel deserved. Eskel, however, seemed to think it sufficient enough and smoothed over the event with an easy smile and good-natured insult. Things shifted back into place, but still they felt changed. It was like a pot broken and fastened together once more. The water still held, but the cracks remained. Geralt feared one day the cracks would open anew and send everything they ever shared spilling out.

He tries not to think about it. 

Geralt’s hair now stretches down the center of his back; the sheaf of it swings loosely between his shoulder blades. It hangs about him like a veil. A perverse vision of a blushing bride. The white has surmounted his head; his natural rust clinging to the ends like a brush dipped in paint. When the boys whisper of him now, it is not longer with thinly veiled jealousy, but overt pity. Geralt is sight to behold. 

He escapes the main keep whenever he has the chance. 

Vesemir is beside Geralt now, puffing away at the stem of his pipe. He and Geralt are perched along the eastern curtain wall of the outer keep. It has long served as a refuge where the two often came to unwind in companionable silence. Kindred spirits. Dusk is forging ahead and with the setting sun the valley below is ablaze in shades of scarlet and ochre. The silhouettes of the Blue Mountains loom against the darkening sky like sentries great and ancient. 

“You’re going to have to cut it,” Vesemir rumbles into the silence, exhaling the smoke from the pipe. It smells of foriegn spices and is lost almost instantly to the wind. 

Geralt moistens his lips in a bid to gain time to think of his response. “It does not hinder me. I have begun tying it back.” A weak excuse and certainly not what Vesemir meant, but he can think of nothing else. 

Vesemir snorts, “Don’t play dumb, Geralt. It doesn’t suit you.” Geralt fists clench where they rest against his thighs. The elder witcher was a shrewd one, indeed. “You will not advance until this business is finished.” Vesemir is rustling through the pack beside him, but Geralt keeps his eyes trained on the sinking sun. Though weakened, the rays of light still piece through his sensitive eyes like needles. Adjusting the size of his pupils would be a simple solution, but Geralt feels no inclination to do so.

The rustling ceases and Vesemir holds the retrieved item out to Geralt. He takes his eyes off the sun and looks. In Vesemir’s palm lay a dagger. It is simply embellished by leather wrappings with a blade whose edge shines molten in the dying sun. Geralt’s heart leaps into his throat and feels himself choke around its girth. He looks at Vesemir desperately, but there is an unyielding in the witcher’s yellow eyes. 

This is not something he can help with. This is something Geralt must do on his own. 

With trembling fingers, Geralt takes the dagger from Vesemir’s hand. His palm is moist with sweat and the leather feels tacky in his grasp. He turns it over in his hand, momentarily catching his reflection in the high polish of the blade. It is not much more than a sliver, but even that is too much to bear. 

Weak. Pathetic. Monstrous. 

That is what all of this boils down to. That is the thing that tightens his throat and clenches his heart. Geralt’s hair is more than just that. It is the last connection to his humanity. The last connection to the person he once was; the person he could have been had he only the chance to become him. It is the last piece of his mother and though he loathes her, he still yearns for her in the way all young boys are wont to. Cutting his hair feels like surrendering. Giving up. Resigning himself to the fact that this is now and forevermore the life he will lead. 

A witcher. A mutant. No home or family; just an infinite stretch of lonely road with nothing at the end. 

Geralt had been taken so young he hadn’t even had the chance to dream of the things he wanted for himself. Nothing beyond the grandeur of adventure and heroics he supposed all little boys dreamt of. If given the chance, what would he have wanted? A modest life in a modest village? A home with a crackling hearth and a companion to keep it warm? Honest work and the mouths of young ones to feed with the coin earned? 

What did it matter? Those were things no longer for him. They never would be. 

Vesemir’s hand comes to rest on his shoulder. It is not a gentle touch nor an affectionate one, but it has a weight and warmth that is grounding. It calms the tempest of Geralt’s thoughts; weakens them to a dull roar. “There is no going back, Geralt. The only way is forward.” It is not the thing that Geralt wants to hear, but he knows it is the thing he must. 

Geralt grasps the dagger firmly in one hand and with the other gathers a section of his bicolored hair. He pulls the strands taught and his scalp pinches with the force of it, but that is his intention. 

He wants for it to hurt.

Drawing in a deep breath, Geralt leaves himself no more time to dither. The blade glints momentarily in the light as he pulls it through with rough, halting cuts. Despite the sharpness of the blade, cutting through his hair proves more difficult than expected. The world could have ended and been rebuilt anew in the time it takes him to finish. As he renders the last strands, Geralt is panting heavily; lungs constricted by a combination of effort and emotion. Most of his hair has been scattered by the wind, but a clump remains clutched in his fist. The blood of a wound staunched, but not yet clean. It takes some effort for Geralt to uncurl his fingers and allow the final remnants to blow free, but eventually they, too, are carried away on the wind to places unknown. Vesemir hums satisfactorily beside him and returns to smoking his pipe unperturbed. Geralt appreciates it. 

There is a sense of relief in this final surrender and it mingles bittersweet with the already existing ache in Geralt’s heart. There is nothing left of the person he was before and with that change has taken root. At last, there is finality. There is no going back. As Vesemir had said, the only way is forward. 

The metamorphosis is complete.

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I just have so many feelings about young Geralt. I want to dive deep into that inner psyche and explore the things that shaped him into the grumbling witcher we know and love today. Hair can be such a personal thing and having it changed against your will seems so profoundly traumatizing (which is in no way related to my own rapidly greying hair despite being in my mid twenties).


End file.
